


No more compromises

by azziria



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-13
Updated: 2011-07-13
Packaged: 2017-10-21 08:51:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azziria/pseuds/azziria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A promise kept, and one last compromise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No more compromises

**Author's Note:**

> Written because apparently this is what my brain comes up with when I'm feeling low, hormonal, and bored at work: bittersweet schmoop. With thanks to Caliecat for the visual input of her [Jersey Shore photos](http://caliecat.livejournal.com/22910.html).

“Why did we have to come all the way out here anyway?”

“I promised. You know I did.”

She trudges out along the boardwalk, coat pulled up around her ears against the wind, clutching her precious burden. She’s pissed at him, he’s done nothing but moan since they got on the plane, and she wishes he hadn’t come. Doesn’t know why he did, actually. She’s pretty sure it’s over between them, pretty sure that her marriage isn’t worth any more effort than she’s given it, that it’s time to call it quits and move on. She’s done her best, made so many compromises over the years, but some things are beyond salvaging and maybe it’s time she faced that fact.

He probably thinks that she was planning to meet another man, to spend an illicit weekend in a hotel somewhere, cuckolding him, paying him back for what he did. That’s how bad it’s got between them, these last months, all the bitterness and jealousy and lack of trust souring what used to be so good. Turns out she’s her mother’s daughter after all, making all those same bad choices, those same mistakes.

She reaches the end of the boardwalk and steps off, boots sinking into the soft sand. The sea is a way off, halfway out on a falling tide, and there’s a broad expanse of windswept sand to cross to get to the where the waves are breaking grey against the shore. The sky is grey, too, clouds scudding across it, the wind has a bite to it and it’s spitting with rain. The weather matches her mood. So different from home, she thinks, suppressing longing thoughts of warm blue water and bright sunshine as she sets off on the long trek towards the sea.

When she gets near to the water’s edge she stops, setting the urn down with care and pulling off her boots and socks. The sand feels gritty between her toes, the colour and texture different from the beaches back home. Rolling up her jeans, she picks the urn up again and walks forward into the surf, and fuck it’s cold, cold to the bone, pain cutting right through her, but she doesn’t stop. She has a promise to keep.

“Grace! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She can hear him shouting somewhere behind her, his voice caught and torn away by the wind, but she ignores him. She doesn’t know why he’s here, doesn’t want him here. This isn’t his place.

“Grace! It’s freezing out here, and you’re going in the water? Are you crazy?” He’s caught up with her now, is shouting at her from just beyond the reach of the waves. “I don’t see why you couldn’t do this back home, why we had to drag ourselves all the way out here to this godforsaken fucking spot to do this!”

She looks back at him, standing forlorn and angry on the edge of the surf, remembers how much she once loved him, feels a sharp pang at how that love has turned to lies and suspicion and petty disagreements. “I told you, I promised,” she shouts to him, “I keep my promises.”

Turning her back on him, on her failed marriage and all the unpleasant thoughts it brings with it, she unscrews the top of the urn, pausing for a moment to let happier memories flood in and allowing the tears to well up in her eyes.

Because it _can_ work, whatever her mother’s experience, whatever her own. What she’s holding in her hands is proof of that, proof that two people _can_ live together and love each other, can bicker and argue and have each other’s backs, can make the compromises work and find a way to go forward together for the long haul. Can fit so well that after one dies (heart attack, the doctors said, quick and virtually painless) the other only lingers for a few months before he follows, and there’s a lump in her throat as she remembers Steve in those last weeks, a grey shadow of his former self, as though the fight had gone out of him once he no longer had Danny to fight with.

This is their last compromise, she thinks. Danny wanted Jersey, and Steve wanted the sea, so she’d made a promise, laughing over a beer on the lanai all those years ago, she’d made a promise to scatter them together on the Jersey Shore. Steve had bitched about spending eternity in the freezing Atlantic, Danny had retaliated by pointing out that at least Steve would finally get to see him swim, and it’s a good memory.

The tear tracks are cold on her cheeks as she lifts the urn and tips it, shaking out the ashes inside to blow away over the cold grey water. She rinses it out, screws the top back on and then straightens up, standing tall and looking out over the waves. Goodbye, she thinks, and smiles through her tears, then takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders and makes a decision.

No more compromises, she thinks. No more compromises until she finds the man who’s worth making them for. She’s her father’s daughter, after all, not just her mother’s, and she knows what she wants.

She wants what he had for all those years, and she’s not going to settle for any less, not any more. No more second best and no more compromises, and that’s how it’s going to be from now on.

Grace Williams is back, and she’ll find her Steve McGarrett, whatever it takes. And that’s another promise she intends to keep.


End file.
